


Superman

by The_Dancing_Walrus



Category: DCU, Justice League & Justice League Unlimited (Cartoons)
Genre: Big Blue Boyscout, Earth-3 (Crime Syndicate Universe), Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-26
Updated: 2013-01-26
Packaged: 2017-11-26 23:17:48
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,260
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/655475
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/The_Dancing_Walrus/pseuds/The_Dancing_Walrus
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Clark muses on the differences and similarities between a villain from his own universe and a hero from another.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Superman

It’s their differences rather than their similarities that he finds the most frightening. He can’t help thinking that somehow he’s responsible for them. The differences.

 

He’s heard the arguments a thousand times before and from his friends as well as his enemies. He knows he’s dangerous. He knows that it’s difficult even for the people in his world to accept he means them well. It’s difficult to watch the blurred footage on the evening news and see something so like a man tear an alien battle fleet apart without that sneaking thought that it (he’s always an it to these people) lives somewhere near them and it could easily-

 

They probably don’t realise how difficult it is for him, being human and kryptonian, both and neither-

 

He doesn’t worry the way he knows Batman does: that he might somehow turn into this opposite, this other-Kal El. He knows that Ultraman, Kal El, is a lost child lashing out at the world because it doesn’t make any sense. Because it’s easier to rant and rage than dwell on your own flaws. Because he never had the Kents to show him how much humanity mattered. A pitiable little monster-

 

The Jokester laughs at criminals, torments and devils them with more……..pointed violent versions of the pranks he uses on Batman. Three-Face has an itchy trigger finger and doesn’t seem to believe in safety catches. The Riddler always leaves a trail, as if daring any Mob Boss to follow it. The Lanterns, in a thousand varieties of yellow and black, vie to be the most monstrous as though terror is the ultimate sign of success. Alex Luthor denounces Superman.

 

But the Jokester is as compassionate as the Flash and cruelty seems to horrify him afresh every time he’s confronted with it. Three-Face is hard and angry but no more than Huntress. The Riddler treats crime as a puzzle, because puzzles are meant to be solved. The Lanterns deal in fear because it might keep the thugs off the streets.

 

Alex’s skin, under the dark business suits, is peppered with scars.

 

He can’t remember why he first looked but now he’s mapped every injury, every mark. His feet and calves are a mass of red burns, and he walks with metal prosthetics (which Clark is sure are painful) to replace lost toes. There are small circles, like cigarette burns, on his arms where his force field over heated and a Morse code of tiny surgical scars around them covering a myriad of computer chips, wires, batteries too small for a human eye clustered under his skin. There are more along his spine, little white semi-circles like the impression of a finger-nail, relays translating nerve impulses to instructions for the suit. There’s a three inch keloid snaking down from his collar bone. A tiny nick on his jaw that might have been from shaving if it wasn’t exactly above the jugular. There’s an S carved on his breast bone and Clark wishes he could ask if it was Superwoman. The careless criss-crossing cuts of glancing blows across his shoulders and sides. The sixteen teeth that aren’t his own. The messy over-lapping indents needles and chemo left in his arms.

 

In his world Clark need only take off his glasses and he’s a living miracle, he can do anything-

 

Recently he’s found that he wants to save Alex Luthor.

 

Because looking from Alex to Lex is like glancing over the best and the worst one man is capable of. Because Lex is entirely selfish while Alex would give his life without a thought for a stranger or a friend. Because both of them are trying to do the impossible but Alex wants to build a better world and Lex wants to tear one down.

 

He can’t help thinking that Lex wasn’t a villain before Superman came along, anymore than Alex was hero before Ultraman.

 

Lex had been a bully. He’d been a rich, powerful criminal. But not a villain, not the sort of mad man with a body count to rival the Joker’s. Obsessed with power, but practical enough not to believe a man could fly. Until he saw one who could.

 

And more and more Clark finds himself wondering what Lex could have been if the world had been just a little different. If it hadn’t needed a Superman.

 

The other heroes hold themselves apart. They act in synch, more of a team than the Justice League and Clark is surprised to find that they’re also more protective of each other, more of a family. He feels proud of (or perhaps for) Alex. He never got his ‘team’ to do much more than tolerate each other. The Justice League look at him as a symbol, a standard, an ideal of heroism. Justice Underground look at Alex as a leader.

 

No, it’s more than that he realises, they look at Alex as _their_ leader. Somehow, over the years and battles and bloodshed, he’s managed to prove himself to all of them. Because Alex will do anything to build his better world.

 

Just like Lex.

 

Clark’s problem is that he thinks he’s invulnerable. He’s so very hard to hurt that (bar the few exceptions) he’s started to think it’s impossible. And because he’s good and compassionate and kind he wants to shield the other heroes. He wants to charge out in front of Batman and Wonder Woman and Flash and Green Lantern and Hawkgirl and even J’onn. He wants to take bullets for them even though he knows this is irrational and that they find it patronising and he _knows_ they can take care of themselves-

 

And now he wants to do it for Alex.

 

And he knows it’s ridiculous, it’s irrational-

 

Alex Luthor is not the sort of man to stand idly by waiting to be rescued and, like Lex, the suggestion that he might not be able to deal with everything under the sun tends to produce a murderous rage. Because admitting he might need help is admitting weakness, which isn’t an attitude Clark has much time for but then he’s the strongest creature on the planet, the Man of Steel.

 

He still can’t quiet understand why any ordinary, fragile man would throw their life away battering against him. And in Lex that suicidal, tenacious, stubbornness looks like madness.

 

In Alex it’s heroic and it draws Clark the same way it draws the others, Justice League and Justice Underground. It leads to idle glances at marks he shouldn’t know are there.

 

He might not understand their world but he understands suffering, he understands pain. He can barely feel bullets but they can end lives in an instant and that dreadful fragility is horrific and-

 

Whatever he might be able to do for the others (whatever they might _let_ him do) he’ll never be able to protect Alex. He’ll never be able to put their world to rights.

 

And he knows that it’s impossible (even for him) to save everyone-

 

But it’s something else to know that somewhere a good man will die at the hands of a Kryptonian just like him.

 

So Clark keeps his distance and doesn’t challenge Alex’s anger because he knows that spite, that hatred is aimed at another man. He doesn’t tell this stranger that he wants to help or that he’s afraid he might have shaped Lex into a monster.

 

He doesn’t tell Alex Luthor that the multiverse will be the poorer when he dies.

 

And he doesn’t stop to consider that may be Luthor will kill Kal El first.


End file.
